We're now officially back from our little holiday hiatus. I'd love to say that we travelled to exotic locales and experienced warm tropical climes, but that's quite the opposite of what happened.
We stayed home, happy to take a break from work ;) (though again, thank you all for your orders and giving us enough work from which to take a break!), and experienced a few snowstorms. So what did we do with our couple of weeks off?
Here are the top seven highlights of Christmas 2007:
1) We.. er.. Jack, received the
Encyclopedia Prehistorica collection of pop-up books.
Jack received these from one of his uncles and hopefully in time, he'll come to appreciate the art that is paper engineering. These books are recommended for ages 5+, but we'll probably wait until he's about 6 or 7 before handing them over. You can get them at Amazon for under $18 each, which is a bargain, considering just how much work must go into each one.
2) We watched a lot
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.
If you've only experienced the show from what's seen on Fox, then I highly suggest you watch the UK version. We'd seen the UK version first on the Food Network, and then watched the US version, and it's not nearly the same show. The UK version is loads better and makes Gordon Ramsay seem less like an arse.
3) We made some presents.
Along with some of the jewelry we gave various members of the family, we also made these pretty things for our friend Julie (who is a
personal chef):
They're cutlery-themed 'snowflake' ornaments. They were fun to make and we may even consider making some Christmas ornaments to sell on the site next year! :)
4) We ate a lot: we found quite a few good recipes on the interweb.
One of them was this
curried carrot soup recipe, that I found after we inadvertantly bought 5 lbs of carrots before Christmas dinner and unsure about what to do with them. We like this soup so much, we've made it three times in the last 2 weeks, and Jack (who is beyond picky) enjoys it too (just leave out the cayenne pepper for the little ones).
5) We ate a lot: we went to the
Urban Pear for a special night out (my birthday!)
Eric took me to the Urban Pear for my birthday meal. It's been the subject of a few rave reviews locally, and we try to make our (rare) nights out something special.
Overall, the food was 'okay', which is a little disappointing for those rare nights out. The antipasti plate was good, and reminded us how much we enjoy roasted garlic and brie :9, the olives were a little too vinegar-y though. We both had the duck breast which was very good, but the accompanying french toast that was a little too heavy for my liking. We also had the crème brulée which was disappointing since there wasn't enough crust on it for my liking, which made it a little too much like a pretentious vanilla pudding :(
Our next big night out will be at
Beckta since we received a gift certificate (thanks Ray!) (Beckta is another local restaurant that's had quite a few rave reviews too).
6) We ate a lot: we got this series of
cookbooks, which is a collection of the most requested Milk Calendar recipes from the last 25 years.
Every year the Canadian dairy board puts out a calendar with recipes using dairy products. You can find some of the more recent recipes
here. They're usually pretty simple dishes that are made with things you've already got in your kitchen. Out of these books, we've made a really good mushroom and leek soup, apple custard crisp and lots and lots and lots of blueberry muffins. Yum.
7) We ate so much that now we're going to try and eat a little less and exercise a little more :)
In the past we've tried following the
Body for life regimen of eating small meals and exercising regularly and it worked rather well. So we'll try that again!
Hope you all had a good holiday!
Labels: Art/Illustration, Interweb fun, Ottawa
